The German Bishops’ Conference is facing backlash for a post about Karl Marx. There was backlash to the post on social media, with many Catholics slamming the German bishops for calling Karl Marx a “great thinker.” One of the comments, from a German conservative, asked rhetorically, “And Karl Marx is a role model, huh? So is socialism, that has cost millions of people worldwide?”
“A mockery to all victims of socialism!” said one commenter in German.” Mr. Cardinal Marx should be ashamed of himself!”

Only a small minority of British Catholics said they would not return to worship in church when the coronavirus pandemic is fully over, according to a new survey. Just 4% of people interviewed in the study, conducted between May 19 and July 26, said they would abandon going to church when restrictions are finally lifted. The findings of the poll of 2,500 people by Catholic Voices, a group set up in the U.K. in 2010 to improve communications between the church and the media, contradict the predictions of some Catholics that the COVID-19 crisis would irrevocably accelerate the decline of collective worship among the faithful. Brenden Thompson, CEO of Catholic Voices, said he was “pleasantly surprised by many of the findings.”
“Catholics miss their parishes and church buildings and seem eager to return, not just content with ‘virtual church,’” he said in a statement.

In signing successive peace deals with entrenched rebel movements, Sudan drew upon the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.
“The constitution should be based on the principle of ‘separation of religion and state,’” read the text of an agreement between the North African nation’s joint military-civilian transitional council and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM–N).
“The state shall not establish an official religion.”
The declaration of principles further cements Sudan’s efforts to undo the 30-year system of strict sharia law under President Omar al-Bashir, during which Islam was the religion of the state.
The agreement was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, four days after a more inclusive peace deal was signed with a coalition of rebel groups in the Sudan Revolutionary Front in Juba, South Sudan.
The Juba agreement established a national commission for religious freedom, which guarantees the rights of Christian communities in Sudan’s southern regions. Sudan’s population of 45 million is roughly 91% Muslim and 6% Christian. Open Doors ranks Sudan at No.7 among the 50 nations where it is hardest to be a Christian.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) interpreted the agreement even more widely: to protect the rights of all Sudanese people to practice their religion of choice. With a stronghold in the southern Nuba Mountains within the South Kordofan region, an area with a significant Christian population, the SPLM–N held out of the initial peace deal specifically because it did not guarantee the separation of religion and state.

Parts of Syria’s north where Kurds, Christians and Yazidis have practiced religious freedom in recent years are reportedly again under attack by mainly Turkish military and their allied Syrian Islamist fighters.
The Syrian Democratic Council, which oversees the autonomous northeast of Syria, condemned Turkey’s cutting off the water supply to the area’s main city, Hassakeh, for nearly four straight weeks. Humanitarian groups have repeatedly accused Turkey of “weaponizing water” since its military takeover of the region in October 2019.
The council warned that Turkey is risking hundreds of thousands of lives in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and soaring temperatures.
“Turkey has cut off water from reaching the city of Hassakeh and the surrounding country side, which is home to more than a million people. This is a crime against humanity,” Gabriel Shamoun, the council’s vice pre-sident, told Catholic News Ser-vice. A Syriac Christian, Shamo-un is also Syriac Union Party official.
One resident, who only provided his first name, George, said wells on the outskirts of the city required about 12 days to fill up the reservoir, and only then could water be distributed. The man said he had already lost several relatives to COVID-19.
Withholding water is a similar tactic used by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, when they cut water supplies to Qaraqosh and other towns of the Ninevah Plain before their 2014 invasion.
The Al-Himme pumping station nearer to the city only covers less than one-third of people’s needs, according to UNICEF.

Just two words – but they say everything about the direction of the reforms of the Francis era.
The words are contained in the new Italian translation of the Mass texts, approved by Pope Francis, and will be used from Easter Sunday 2021.
In the prayers said over the bread and wine, the priest says – as he always has – that Jesus’ blood was poured out per tutti (“for all”) and not per molti (“for many”).
The Italian bishops have, in reality, changed nothing, simply keeping the translation of the Latin phrase pro multis that has been widely used since the liturgical reforms mandated by the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.
But that is what is so significant. The translation of pro multis has been the subject of intense debate over recent decades.
Following the Council, many countries used the equivalent of “for all” in their translations, although this began to change in 2001, after the Liturgiam Authenticam instruction called for a more literal translation of Latin texts.
In 2006, Rome ruled that pro multis should be translated as “for many” with Benedict XVI insistent on this point.

The Syrian government has announced that it will build a replica of the Hagia Sophia, according to Lebanon’s Al-Modon media.
This in opposition to the Turkish regime’s conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
A leader of the pro-Syrian government National Defence Forces militia, Nabeul Al-Abdullah, obtained the approval of Bishop Nicola Baalbaki, the Metropolitan of Hama and its dependencies to build a new church in the city of Suqaylabiyah in Hama province. More than 17,000 residents of Suqaylabiyah are overwhelmingly Greek Orthodox. Al-Modon said that the funding for the construction of the church is the first practical and indirect response from Russia to express its anger against Turkey for converting Hagia Sophia.
Russian MP Vitaly Milonov stated that “unlike Turkey, [Syria] is a country that clearly shows the possibility of peaceful and positive interfaith dialogue,” adding that “Orthodox Christians in Russia can help Syria with construction.”
The talk of creating a replica of Hagia Sophia in northern Hama had started in mid-July when Abdullah announced his donation of a plot of land for the implementation of the project.
He presented the idea to the commander of the Russian controlled Hmeimim military base in Latakia province, and there he got the initial support for the project. This was followed by visits of Russian leaders and officials to the headquarters of the Abd Allah militia in northern Hama, who have been on the front line fighting against Turkish-backed jihadists.
Russian support for the construction of a Syrian Hagia Sophia was confirmed by the visit of a large military delegation from the Hmeimim base to the city of Suqaylabiyah, where they were received by a number of “national defence” leaders north of Hama, bishops and church officials, according to the Lebanese newspaper.
The delegation visited a number of religious sites and schools in the city, examined the project site and promised to help in setting detailed urban plans and secure the necessary support to start work.

Nigeria is becoming the “biggest killing ground of Christians in the world” due to attacks by Boko Ha-ram and Fulani militants, says a leading charity.
International Christian Concern (ICC) estimates between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians have been killed in the last decade in the West African nation, the most populous on the continent.
Nigeria’s 206 million people are almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. Islam is the dominant faith in the North, and Christianity in the South – but most of the killings take place in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where the halves of the country meet. Attacks by Fulani herders in particular have had a devastating effect on Christian farmers -thousands have fled, leaving behind fertile farmlands.
“Without the access to their land, they no longer have the ability to grow food to sustain themselves and their families. It is also hurting the larger community as a whole as there are known food shortages throughout northern Nigeria,” Nathan Johnson – ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa – told Crux. “The three biggest terrorist organizations in the world today are ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab. Boko Haram has been operating in Nigeria since 2009, and ISIS started a splinter group there in 2015 called Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Al-Shabaab operates out of Somalia and mainly in East Africa.
There is also another lesser known group which we at ICC term “Fulani militants.” This is a hostile group of individuals who attack Christian farming communities throughout the Middle Belt of Nigeria. We do use the term militants because there are many Fulani who are peaceful, but there are also violent groups amongst their population who use it as a disguise. Between these three groups, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2010. This persecution has several different drivers, based on groups and location.

Turkey has issued a presidential decree ordering the conversion of the nation’s best-known Byzantine monastic church into a mosque. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan published the executive order sealing the fate of the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, Istanbul, a month after Turkey’s top court delivered a unanimous verdict declaring the basilica of Hagia Sophia a mosque.
The decree, printed in the National Gazette, transfers “the administration of the Kariye Mosque [Chora Church] to the Directorate of Religious Affairs [Diyanet].”
In accordance with Article 35 of law No. 633 on the Presidency of Religious Affairs it orders the opening of the “mosque for [Islamic] worship.” Erdogan’s diktat over-turns an earlier ruling of the Council of Ministers from April 23, 1945, which had directed the ancient monastic church to be used as a museum and warehouse.
The executive order formally implements the change in the church’s status, which was passed in Dec. 2019 by a decision of Turkey’s Council of State. Speaking to Church Militant, renowned Islamic historian Robert Spencer stressed that the conversion of Hagia Sophia and now the Chora Church into mosques demonstrated the “signal failure” of Pope Francis’ pact with the world’s highest-ranking Sunni Muslim leader Ahmad al-Tayyeb.
“Anyone could have predicted this monumental fiasco from the moment Pope Francis and al-Tayyeb signed the deal in February 2019,” Spencer asserted.
On May 29, Ottoman soldiers found their way to Chora and hacked the icon to pieces.
Muslim ruler Hadim Ali Pasha converted the church to a mosque between 1495–1511, adding a mihrab (a niche that indicates the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, facing which Muslims are required to pray) in the main apse and replacing the belfry with a minaret. Chora is an increasingly popular tourist destination known for its best-preserved examples of stunning Byzantine mosaics and frescoes. The interior is covered with biblical scenes and portraits of Jesus and the saints dating back to the 14th century.

Few, if any, vice presidential candidates have had as much exposure to the world’s religions as Kamala Harris, the 55-year-old senator from California whom Joe Biden just picked as his running mate.
Harris’ ethnic, racial and cultural biography represents a slice of the U.S. population that is becoming ascendant but that has never been represented in the nation’s second-highest office.
Here are five faith facts about Harris:
She was raised on Hinduism and Christianity.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from Chennai, India; her father, Donald Harris, from Jamaica. The two met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her name, Kamala, means “lotus” in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.
But because her parents divorced when she was 7, she also grew up in Oakland and Berkeley attend-ing predominantly Black churches. Her downstairs neighbor, Regina Shelton, often took Kamala and her sister, Maya, to Oakland’s 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist.
She is married to a Jewish man.
Harris met her husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, on a blind date in San Francisco. They married in 2014. At their wedding, the couple smashed a glass to honour Emhoff’s upbringing (a traditional Jewish wedding custom).
It was Harris’ first marriage and his second. An article in the Jewish press described her imitation of her Jewish mother-in-law, Barbara Emhoff, as “worthy of an Oscar.”
She was criticized for not proactively assisting in civil cases against Catholic clergy sex abuse during the years she served as a prosecutor.

The German Bishops’ Conference has said it will accept the Vatican’s invitation to discuss the new instruction on parishes at a meeting in Rome, suggesting that it will be accompanied by laymen representing the “Synodal Process” under way in Germany.
At the conclusion of their meeting in the Bavarian town of Würzburg on August 24, the permanent council, comprising the diocesan bishops of the 27 Catholic dioceses in Germany, announced the decision that Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg would “accept the offer of conversation made by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Beniamino Stella.”
Furthermore, as CNA Deu-tsch, CNA’s German news partner, reported, the German Bishops’ Conference announced that Bätzing “will suggest to the Congregation that the conversation be conducted with the Presidium of the Synodal Way, since bishops, priests, deacons and laity are equally addressed in the instruction.” If and when the meeting is scheduled to take place is still unclear.
Cardinal Beniamino Stella, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, said on July 29 that he would be happy to receive the bishops in order to “remove doubts and perplexity” voiced by German prelates.
Stella said that the meeting could take place “in due course” if the bishops wished to present their objections to the instruction, issued by his congregation on July 20. He reportedly declined to respond to specific criticisms ahead of the potential meeting.